Israel – Palestine: Some of the truths behind the conflict

LOS ANGELES, July 19, 2014 — The most recent Israeli security operation began when Palestinians kidnapped three innocent teenage Israelis and murdered them. Palestinians led by Hamas have claimed that they need to engage in “resistance” to end the “illegal occupation” of “Palestine.”

This narrative paints the Israelis as colonizers and the Palestinians as the indigenous population. To understand the current conflict requires understanding the history of the Israelis and the Palestinians. A chronological history of both peoples is the best way to separate myths from facts.

Abraham fathered Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac fathered Jacob who fathered 12 sons including Joseph. That is the Jewish lineage.

Ishmael had 12 sons, the 12 princes. That is the Muslim lineage, although Islam did not exist until Muhammad in 622 AD. Because Ishmael bullied Isaac, Ishmael was sent away. Ishmael was still loved, so as compensation for his exile he was given much more land than Isaac. He was just not given the land of Judea and Samaria, which Isaac received.

The ancient Israel lineage goes back thousands of years to Abraham and Isaac. However, the Jews were sinners, worshiped idols, and were sent into diaspora (exile). There was a long time afterward where nobody from Abraham’s lineage lived in Judea and Samaria.

Over time the land became worthless — nobody wanted it. It was like a cross between Afghanistan and Detroit, but worse. It was considered uninhabitable.

Jews were still in exile, scattered throughout the world. Their choices were stay banished or return to worthless land. This was their punishment for being sinners. Eventually they decided to return. They took land that everybody said was worthless and started with simple orange groves. They had no oil, gold, or anything else wealthy or powerful. They had only their orange groves.

Now the notion of God and biblical promises is troublesome for many people. Yet if one ridicules the notion of a Jewish return, one would have to ridicule their leaving as well. Jews were there. Abraham existed. Ancient Judea and Samaria were Israel, the Kingdom of David, the very land being fought over now.

Jews were originally there a few thousand years ago. Nobody disputes that Judaism existed long before Christianity and Islam, and that the first Arabs and Muslims existed long before Palestinians.

The land we call Israel was conquered by the Romans. The Romans did not hate the Jews. They killed everyone equally. So the Jews lost to the Romans, toiling on land they no longer controlled. The Romans eventually turned to Christianity, The Christian Romans saw their empire last a few hundred years, but in 476 AD the huns defeated the Romans.

In 1453 Constantinople fell and became Istanbul. Islam was on the rise with the Ottoman Empire. However, the Muslims suffered their own humiliating military defeats around World War I and have never been as influential since. At no time were any of these people Palestinians.

The Ottomans were Turks.

After Israelis had agricultural success, Mohammedans (Muslims) came looking for work. The Mohammedans have always believed that their destiny was a caliphate in that entire part of the world. So having a non-Muslim people in their part of the world would be like allowing Republicans in San Francisco. It’s an eyesore.

The Arabs always hated the Jews in the same way Ishmael hated Isaac, but these Arabs were not Palestinians. They were just Arabs. A key moment came in 1917 with the Balfour declaration. England, the dominant power now, promised part of the land to the Jews and part to the Arabs. At this point both sides have aspirational goals. Israel has a historical claim.

Those arguing that it was not England’s land to give miss the fact that Britain now ran the world. So in a sense, yes they could and yes they did.

England seems to have issued the Balfour Declaration as a tool to aid them in their war efforts against the Ottomans. The British always did what was best for the British. Jews and Arabs were afterthoughts.

While the Balfour document references “Palestine” as a place for Arabs, it does not reference Palestinians.

At that point Palestine was just meant for Arabs with Israel for Jews. The Jews accepted the Balfour declaration, the Arabs rejected the deal. The Arabs were still in neighboring areas outside of the original Judea and Samaria

Even though the lands of Judea and Samaria were originally Jewish only, the Arabs rejected Jews having any part of it because they did not want any non-Muslims in that entire world region. The key is that while there were many Arab peoples with rich civilizations, none of them were “Palestinians.”

As of this time those people do not exist.

Mesopotamians would be precursors to Iraq and Persians lineage would trace to Iran. However, 1917 England is far less important than what happens in 1945. The Jews were still in exile. Then came World War II and the Holocaust, the greatest evil known to man.

Six million Jews were murdered.

That went on from 1933 until 1945. After the Holocaust, the world’s powers decided that Jews must be given a state of their own to make up for the genocide they went through. Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and other leaders supported the creation of a Jewish state called Israel.

The Jews wanted all of the land that was the original Judea and Samaria. Arabs felt that they should get part of the land even though they already had a bunch of nations in the region.

The world powers declared two states to begin existence in 1948, a Jewish state called Israel and an Arab state called Palestine. They were to live side by side. The Jews got the inferior plot of land, but at least they had something.

The two states were to begin existing on May 15, 1948. Had both groups accepted this, there would be two states today.

Again, the Arabs did not want the Jews to exist. They wanted all of the land. Arab armies from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria waged war on the newly created Israel the very next day. The Israelis were vastly outnumbered, but so were the Americans against the British in 1776.

Just like in that case, the smaller determined army won.

The Arabs waged war, and they lost. They gambled. It backfired. Now Israel gets to exist, but the Arabs never give up their dream of owning all of the land. They wage war again in 1956 and lose again. Another war happens in 1967, and this is the big one. Israel absolutely devastates the Arab armies. Israel captures more land.

Israel now controls the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, in addition to Israel proper. This is where a split develops in the Arab world.

Many Arabs “got the message.” They realized they had lost several wars. They are now willing to just tolerate a Jewish state until a time comes that they can win on the battlefield. They hate Israel but realize that losing another war could put their own kingdoms at risk.

Dictators who lose wars do not fare well at home.

A small cadre of rebel insurgents want to keep fighting. They foment instability in the countries they are inhabiting in an attempt to overthrow the Arab and Muslim governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

That way they can wage war against Israel. First they have to take down their own governments. An organization called the “Palestinian Liberation Organization” (PLO) was formed in 1964, but did not really get going until after the 1967 war. It began as a reaction to Arab anger at “surrendering” to the Jews.

The first two PLO Chairman were lightly regarded, kind of like how Crassus was the weak link to Caesar and Pompeii.

In early 1969, the third PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat took over. He was an Egyptian. He wanted outright confrontation with Arab government leaders he deemed as soft on Israel. His goal was to topple Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Dictators do not retain power by tolerating such behavior.

In 1970 there was a bloody crackdown. Jordan killed about 10,000 of these rebels. Many others fled. These people who fled Jordan and Egypt knew they could not go back, or they would be murdered. They would never be accepted as Jordanians and Egyptians.

These rebels were now men without a country. They could not go “home,” so they needed a homeland. They chose “Palestine,” otherwise known as Israel.

Call them gypsies. Call them nomads. Call them squatters. Call them illegal immigrants.

They were just people who showed up, planted themselves, and then had the temerity to claimed they owned everything. There has never been a nation of Palestine. There was no Palestinian organization until 1964 and no Palestinian cause until 1970.

The PLO led by Arafat began the movement of radical Islamic terrorism that exists to this day. Arafat’s men murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. The Arabs living in Gaza are indigenous to Egypt. Those living in the West Bank are indigenous to Jordan.

There is no indigenous Arab population to Israel. The Israelis are not colonizers. There is no “occupied” Palestinian land. When Palestinians refer to the illegal occupation, they are referring to the entire state of Israel.

Palestinians led by Hamas to this day say that their firing of rockets at Israel will end when Israel ends the occupation. What this means is that Palestinians will stop waging war as soon as Israel ceases to exist.

Peace is defined as every Jew vacating the land and allowing Arabs to control 100% of it. The last Palestinian demand is “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian “refugees.” If referring to the original people who fled Jordan as Palestinians is incorrect, referring to their children and grandchildren as refugees makes zero sense.

No other people classify offspring as refugees. Holocaust survivors are indigenous to Europe. Children of Holocaust survivors born in the United States have zero right of return to Europe.

Palestinians want their own state, but they also want all the children and grandchildren of the original 1970s rebels to be given the right to return to Israel rather than Palestine. This would lead to an Arab Muslim only state of Palestine next to an Israel that would now have more Arab Muslims than Jews.

Again, the Palestinians want total Arab control without a Jewish state in existence. While the Palestinians have launched many acts of terror against Jews in Israel in the last four decades, all of the bombs in the world will not alter archaeological and historical facts.

Jews existed in Israel for thousands of years. “Palestinians” arrived in the 1970s. Palestinians are an entirely fictional people with an entirely fictional narrative.

Brooklyn born, Long Island raised and now living in Los Angeles, Eric Golub is a politically conservative columnist, blogger, author, public speaker, satirist and comedian. Read more from Eric at his TYGRRRR EXPRESS blog. Eric is the author of the book trilogy “Ideological Bigotry, “Ideological Violence,” and “Ideological Idiocy.”